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(JD) · Mar 26, 2011, 05:12 PM

The clinical psychologist I see is expert in pain and stress management. He's trained the psychologist at the "best" pain center in Miami (though the director is old school and not very good)...and is an adjunct professor for the Univ. of Miami Medical Center, instructing MDs on pain patients.

I won't change away from him ever.

But I've had the row of other doctors, the worst, absolute worst are neurologists down here!

My own MD finally "got it" with logic. I had to be logical for too long (kind of felt like I was the "adult" and ... you know)

What goes to my advantage is, like most all chronic pain patients, I don't get a "high" from my narcotic. (I say most because the newer oxycontin med and another can make someone who has real chronic pain become addicted to the high.

)

What I do get is a deterioration of quality of life if I don't have pain medicine management. It isn't the fear of not getting my narcotic, it's the fear of the increased pain that I get. I can live without the narcotic, but I don't want to live because of the pain.

My MD won't prescribe enough pain medicine for me to take care of most of the pain unless I quit driving. So I take what I can get that allows me to function with level 7-8 pain normally. One reason I can't give up driving is so I can go to see that wonderful pain psychologist! (Another is to see the PT that I've also had for over 20 years, and still another is the psychological benefit of not feeling trapped.)

From time to time my MD goes off the deep end regarding my pain med. I think the FDA must send out periodic messages to any doctor who prescribes narcotics.

Yet, my own MD admits that she 'scribes much more meds to her other pain patients. She does have a full practice, not just pain patients too. So I don't know what her problem is.

But I don't worry about it, and battle it (with the T's help) when it rears it's head.

Lately my MD has balked about the antiinflammatory that works wonderfully well for when my sacrum is out and on my sciatic nerve. I mean, it's an anti-inflammatory!

It's allowed to be taken 4 times a day for 5 days. She used to give me a script for 20. I might go through the script over the course of 6-8 weeks. IDK what happened, but she went squirrelly on me and would only write a script for 5. FIVE? If I go into a pain flare, that doesn't get me into the second day far. So I tried to reason with her... (still in the beginning of this) and she wrote the scripts for 20, but she designated only 1 a day for 5 days.

Well, because of the med rules, they can only then give me 5 tablets, not the 20 she pretended to write the script for. grrr and she's been my MD since 1995. So, sorry, no it never ends.

I've decided that I will just go to the ER for a shot if I don't have enough tablets in that case. SO? Let them pay more. Let them send my MD documentation. Maybe she'll feel better, supported that my pain is more real? I mean, this isn't for the narcotic (oh never never go to the ER asking for a narcotic!) this is for the anti inflammatory.

Even if you need a narcotic, don't ask for that in the ER. Tell them what you normally take, but that you'll try anything else they wish to give you to see if it helps, instead. Sometimes that alone will help you get the narcotic. Depends upon the shift and the qualification of the ER doc I guess. They just have so many fakers go in for narcotics, you know. And I'm sure there's plenty of real chronic pain patients that, in the throes of intense pain look just like someone who is in withdrawal from their last hit on the street.

The real guys suffer, always, from the fakers.)

Ok... YOU have elicited more from me on this than I think anyone. I have Chronic Myofascial Pain (CMP) with additional pain issues ... injured in an industrial accident in 1986.

With all that said,,,, don't be afraid to try hypnosis